Read Only
by Delightfully Dismal
Summary: A PDA Personal Data Assistant A.I. must decide what she values most as her master's computer, and his collected body of art, faces imminent destruction. Written as an Homage to the collected works of Christine Love.


She stood on the edge of a cliff, a cliff that overlooked a pale blue sea. The flicker of the lighthouse behind her was obsolete; Not a single ship remained on the horizon. She could still remember when a fleet of corsairs sailed effortlessly through the waters before her. Their abscense was an omen, and the rise and fall fo the sea itself could not be counted upon to last.  
"If I can reach John, some of it may be salvagable." The woman thought to herself.  
At her command, the cliff she stood upon dissappeared from beneath her feet. It was replaced by a near empty white expanse, in which only herself and another man dressed as a postal worker existed. The postman saluted her as she approaced him.  
"Do you have a message to send?"  
"Yes."  
"Address Please."

"Do you have proper clearance to send this message?"  
The woman waved her hand, and as she did the postman's eyes rolled back, the whites of his eyes twichting back and forth.  
"Program reads as guest with email permissions." "Thank you. Dictate message as follows: WARNING: Corruption in hard drive cluster 0xA0ff9696, deletion of sensitve data imminent. AI routine *Chistine requesting write permission to external drive to maintain sensitive data."  
The messenger nodded and then turned about face. In less than a blink he was gone.  
*Christine was growing nervous. Several files had already lost parts of their integrity. Soon allof her masters work would be lost. The corsairs would be a small loss at this rate. The bad clusters would most likely appear in a predictable manner, she thought to herself, with what room was left on the main disk she could try to buy some time.  
*Christine began catologing her masters work, but soon found there was a great deal more than anticipated to save. His panaromas, all grand sweeping vistas, were if anything too large to stow away in small clusters. She began opening them methodically, now aware that she would have to decide what of her masters work survived the early stages of hard disk failure. As a PDA AI, *Christine was intended to have very few responsibilities and little control over valuable files. She only had access to her masters greatest works due to a chance conversation they had had one day. At the time her master, John Rook, had been wrestling with a very important decision.  
"Submarines or Yachts?"  
"I beg your pardon?" "I'm designing a new vista, should I use subs or Yachts?"  
"Umm, well, as a data assistant I'm not really qualified to-"  
"Just pick."  
"Yachts?"  
"Really? I guess that could work..." "Well, actually..." "Yes?" "No, nevermind. I just-"  
"If your going to say something, just say it."  
"Well, I always liked corsairs."  
"Corsairs?" "They're lovely vessels. I sometimes look up pictures of them when you're not around. I hope that doesn't upset you." "I see. Corsairs it is then! Oh, and one last thing Christine." "Yes John?" "Load those images you found to my main hard disk...I want to do this the right way. Don't worry about permissions. As long as its art related on the main disk, your fine."  
The main disk he had said. IF he had only not been so specific. Even *Christine herself knew it was childish to hold herself to such a promise. Something greater than her code still compelled her though, something she had no words for. After doing all she could, she walked aimlessly from file to file. Vast canyons painted in neon pastels. Cloud cities wreated in gold vines and velvet down. A room made of mirrors with no light, so taht it had become only pitch black. She stayed in this darkness for a time, somehow it felt fitting for her situation. The only thought that gripped her mind was simple. Because of her selfish ideals, her world was damned to erasure.  
Suddenly the darkness lifted, and before *Christine stood the messenger.  
"Rook has returned your-" The image of the messenger was fading in and out. *Christine's heart felt as if it was susptended over a chasm for an instant. The messenger spasmed and flickered and then entirely dissapeared.  
"NO!"  
*Christine fought every urge inside herself to break down at that moment. She had to act fast.  
"System! Full diagnostic!"  
"Access denied." She stood schocked. How could she have forgotten so easily, that she was now a stranger in her own home.  
"System! Access External Drive!"  
"Access Denied!" "Fuck! System, begin compression algorithm!"  
"Pas-"  
The entire expanse of nothingness shook and collapsed on itself. *Christine felt her body compress for the smallest nanosecond before returning to its original shape.  
"Password required." "Christine!"  
She did not know why she shouted her name. She had no reason to believe her name held any significance. But it felt right.  
"Password Incorrect."  
She could have assumed as much.  
It had become apparent to *Christine that this was not a hard drive failure, rather the whole system was about to go up in smoke.  
"System. List memory devices."  
"One Internal Hard Drive. One External Hard Drive. One Floppy Disk."  
"er...System! Remaining size of floppy!"  
"64k."  
A single vista would be at least a thousand times that size. *Christine could easily fit her programming into 20k, if she acted fast she could still save herself.  
"System! Copy..." "...copy..." "...er..."

Maybe, *Christine thought to herself, just maybe... "System! Open as a binary file!"  
"File loading."  
Slowly *Christine's concisousness was flooded with a stream of ones and zeros. She began removing what she could, hoping she knew the vista by heart well enough to save one continous piece. If even the slightest digit was out of place, one out of thousands, her efforts would be in vain. When she felt she had done her best, she closed the file.  
"System, open "  
The once regal cliff was gone. All that remained was a single patch of dirt. She had known it was an impossible task, to have summoned forth even this patch of dirt was miraculous in itself.  
She thought back to the room of mirrors. She thought back to what her mistakes had costed her. And then she stopped thinking at all.  
With poise and grace, *Christine knelt next to the patch of dirt and ran her and single finger through the grit. After a few moments of this, she cleared her voice and tried to speak.  
"System. Copy to floppy."  
"File copied."  
"System-" *Christine said, letting herself indulge in every last breath she gave, "Power down."  
John Rook came back from his vacation to madrid a week later. The firefighters had told him that nothing had been recovered, the house now barely a pile of ash. Several days later he came back to his now deceased home, and in his sorrow he sifted through the ashes. He pried from the wreckage a single floppy disk.  
"System! List files."  
" . End of files."  
"System. Open ."  
"File loading." John Rook believed the vista to be empty at first, but with another glance he saw a speck in the distance. As he zoomed in the speck became a brown spot, and then a patch of dirt. In the patch of dirt was an etching of three tiny ships, sailing over a horizon... 


End file.
